Okay, now skip this paragraph if you’ve been following my blog and already know my story. For those who haven’t I’ve been on one ride of a weight loss journey over the past ten years that you can read about on The Journey to Finding Me. The Cliff Notes version of that story goes something like this:

• 1999: 325 pounds, miserable, sad, hopeless, desperate. Gave my will and my life over the will of a loving gracious God, worked a program of recovery, and lost 125 pounds. Gratitude, joy, and more gratitude.
• 2008: Felt the time had come to lose the last of the excess weight I was carrying, participated in a medically-supervised fast, continued to bust my behind at the gym, and lost another 70 pounds. Thrilled, amazed, and more gratitude still.
• 2009: Had corrective surgery to remove the excess skin. Ouch. Slowly had weight plateau about 20 pounds above post-surgery low. Full physical revealed in excellent physical condition or to quote my doctor, “If I didn’t know better I’d assume you were a conditioned athlete.” More gratitude.

And then came the Fall and Winter of 2010 filled with cake pops, cupcakes, and cookies. There were tables of goodies prepared for hospitality hour following church on Sundays.  There were high fat dinners and sugar-saturated desserts loving made and shared with my brother (ALS requires that he eat to keep as much weight on as he can); foods filled with childhood memories and staggering levels of calories from cans of cream soup and cubes of butter. All of which brings us to the orange clad still sweaty faced from a workout Anita in the photo montage at six o’clock.

And here we are. Up thirty pounds from my lowest weight and a solid ten to fifteen pounds from where I’d ideally like to be, and once again sporting a muffin top. You know the muffin top; that squishy belt of chub that resides just above the waistline. This little muffin-top, which in my case would more fittingly  be called a cookie-top since cookies are largely responsible for it’s reappearance, stands (or jiggles as the case may be) as witness to the virtuousness of my self-discipline over the past two months of blitzkrieg baking.

Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, and by they I mean those incredibly creative cookie bakers whose blogs I’ve been stalking following for the past few months. Unless their profile photos are actually a “cut and paste” JPG of a model from “Women’s Health Magazine” then clearly these women have established a reasonable level of sampling and taste-testing that’s not pushing past the perimeter of their pants.

And then again, maybe they aren’t all compulsive overeaters with no moderate set point as to how much is enough and how much is too much. I came broken from the factory. My dial is set to one more. One more bite. One more taste. One more plate, one more serving, one more dozen. These are just the facts of me and my relationship with food. I don’t make the news people, I just report it.

I can’t draw or paint or sculpt but decorating cookies is like creative expression for me. I love mixing the dough and decorating the cookies. Giving something from my kitchen is a natural and easy way for me to show care and love to my family and friends. Every time I put on one of my Etsy-acquired vintage aprons it ties me back to times I spent with my grandma making batch after batch of snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies. And with risking sounding like I’m taking it over the top, there’s something about spending time baking that restful and calming to me. Dare I say meditative? And here’s the really amazing thing; it seems I’m a more than respectable baker. I can turn out some awesome groceries with a few ingredients and an oven set to 350. Something I bake can make someone smile. How cool is that? For all these reasons I don’t want to give up baking but neither do I want to find myself in a dicey place when it comes to being around all that yummy goodness.

So what’s a girl to do? Well, I have a couple big cookie commits coming up soon but for the time being my focus is going to be

Less Baking and More Biking

Less time searching Saveur and time exploring Eating Well

And definitely, Less Pie and More Protein.

And only time and my cookie top will tell . . .

And did I mention 104 days until gelato?

That means I have 104 days to trim the little bit of soft and squishy around my waist that arrived in winter and made itself at home on my fleshy frame through spring. My goal in losing weight before Italy isn’t so I can eat until I pop, though I’m not saying that’s not possible given the newspaper headlines I read a few years ago that announced “Woman Eats 20 Pizzas and Explodes!!!” If the National Inquirer is to be believed it could happen.

But popping open like an overstuffed ravioli isn’t what I’m trying to avoid. Instead I want to get trimmed and toned so  a) I’m in the best physical condition to enjoy walking through Rome, biking around Tuscany, and hiking the mountains edging along the Amalfi Coast; and b) the travel clothes I’ve already bought will be loose comfortable instead of snug sorta-comfortable when I disembark at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.

And really, despite my enthusiasm for getting to know the flavors of Italy on an intimate first-name basis, my expectation is to come home without gaining more than a couple pounds, if that. Wishful thinking, you say? A naive dreamer, you call me? Not so! I counter. Well, that is if historical evidence counts for anything since two summers ago I managed to eat my way through Greece and come home the same weight as when I left despite consuming vats of whole milk yogurt drowning in  honey and walnuts, sweet coffee drinks, slabs of grilled cheese, bowls of tzatziki swimming in olive oil, souvlaki sandwiches (skewers of lamb wrapped in warm pita and stuffed with a fistful of greasy french fries)…and then on my second day in Greece….

But for the next two months gelato and pasta will be reserved for my dreams while lighter fare will be on my plate, primarily focusing on non-processed whole foods high in vegetables, fruits and lean protein. That’s typically how we eat in our home anyway but the difference is getting myself back into the habit of eating moderate portions as opposed to my mile high heap on a plate default and writing down what I eat each day in a food journal, and I can’t say this enough but keeping a food journal is a tried and true key to successful weight loss and long-term maintenance! These days I’m using NetDiary for the iPad to record my food and exercise and I’m loving it. (Click on the image to the left to see a larger image of my exciting menu for the day). Speaking of which, after a season of cold weather hibernation I’m not only cleaning up my food plan but ramping back up to my usual exercise routine; core strength training three times a week, high intensity workouts (spinning, stair-stepping) three times a week, and plenty of walking, hiking, and biking for the pure enjoyment of being alive!

That’s why I watch The Biggest Loser. Those are my people. The details of their stories may be different from mine but the physical challenges obesity brings, the public humiliations that come with the territory, and the insanity of the food obsession is something we share in common and so when one of them is telling one of their fat stories or whining about the work involved in losing the weight or celebrating a victory like wearing their first pair of jeans or being able to touch their toes, I get it. We’re not only in the same book. We’re on the same page. Every season when a new batch of chunky monkeys (and I say chunky monkeys with tenderness, not sarcasm) stand on those ginormous scales for the first time I’m reminded of how miserable life was then and how committed I am to holding on to and building on the life I now have; and when I watch them celebrate their new life on the season finale, I can’t help but sniffle and tear up empathetic to the happiness they must feel in leaving their old life behind and their hope in the new life before them. Those moments are so inspiring that I’m willing to endure a thousand cheesy produce placements and awkwardly acted “spontaneous” commercials for a few truly genuine and heart-warming revelations.

So I naturally loved Fat Chance: Losing the Weight, Gaining My Worth, by former Biggest Loser contestant Julie Hadden. In an often-humorous and always inspiring way, Julie shares behind the scenes stories from her season on the show and describes her own personal journey toward as the sub-title reveals, losing weight and gaining self-worth. Duh. What I didn’t expect to find that Julie is a seriously hardcore Christian and so the book blends her witness as a Christian with her experience toward reclaiming her life and health. Because I’m a rather passionate Jesus girl myself, I really enjoyed the blend of the power of God and the power of Jillian as influences in her life!

One of the sections in the book I really connected with was when Julie wrote about three myths she had bought into around weight loss and maintaining a life of good health. The myths are Julie’s. The comments are mine.

Myth 1: It will get easier.

I really did believe that once I lost the weight maintaining my weight would be comparatively easy, but as you know from reading previous posts, oh, the sweet delusion of ignorance. I know this can be hard to hear when you still have a mess of weight to loss but in my experience, losing the weight is the easier part. Losing weight when I was 325, 275, and 190 pounds was made easy (relatively that is) because there was a constant pay off whether it was fitting into a smaller pair of pants, doing something I couldn’t physically do before, or having someone comment on how good I was looking. I use to ridicule normal weight people who whined about not being able to lose those nasty 5 or 10 pounds. “Oh boo-hoo, poor little you!” I had so little compassion for a 5-pounder knowing that my own weight was exactly the same as the Chicago Bears quarterback, William Refrigerator Perry. I kid you not. But now I get it. Trying to lose 5 pounds at 166 pounds is proving to be more difficult than losing 25 at 300 pounds, and then getting to a weight and maintaining it is a whole other ballgame. There aren’t new noteworthy successes around every corner. People stop commenting on your weight loss and how great you look. Your clothes and body aren’t constantly changing. You work out work out work out and instead of the scales dropping into another 10 pound range you’re lucky if there’s a shift in ounce measurements. So it doesn’t get easier but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in the first place. Do the hard work of losing the excess weight because you deserve to be healthy and when you get to the weight you want to maintain then just do the work that’s required to stay there one day at a time. Considering the options, it’s worth the hard work because you’re worth the hard work and the good health.

Myth 2: One bad choice won’t matter.

I spent 40 plus years of my life telling myself that it wouldn’t matter, just this once. This one cookie. This one trip to the fast food restaurant. This one day of laying for hours on the couch. The end result was that I got up to 325 pounds one bad choice at a time. One bite. One meal. One bag. One container. Just one and just this one time. The truth is that very choice matters because the next choice builds on the choice before. It would go something like this. “I’ve been doing so good on my diet and I really really want one bowl of ice cream. Just one and no more. I know I probably shouldn’t but really, this will be all I have. Just one bowl.” So I’d eat the one bowl of ice cream and then a few minutes or maybe a few hours later I’d start negotiating inside my head. “I know I shouldn’t have any more ice cream but I had such a small bowl the last time and since there’s only a little ice cream left in the container I might as well finish it up. That way all the ice cream will be gone and I can start fresh tomorrow.” And the next day would come and maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have more ice cream but usually I did. More ice cream. Another trip through the drive-thru. Another phone call for another four meal deal delivery from the Chinese restaurant.

But the good news is that just as one bad choice matters so does one good choice and good choices are something we get the opportunity to make every minute of every day. Choose to not make another trip to the refrigerator. Choose to not get a second plate of food. Choose the apple over the candy bar. Choose to walk one more block. Choose water over soda. Choose to go to bed an hour earlier. Good choice after good choice after good choice add up to getting you where you want to be. It happens one choice at a time and it’s in your and my power to decide whether that will be a choice that will work against us or for us.

Myth 3: Hard work equals radical results.

I’ve been working hard in recent months. I follow a limited food plan, saying no a thousand times a day to a bite of something here or there. I pass by the free samples at the grocery store. I put nearly blue low-fat milk in my coffee when I want cloud white cream. There are days when I’m craving a big bowl of pasta glistening in butter and instead I belly up to the bar for a bowl of steamed cauliflower with non-fat dressing. I go to the gym five days a week to work out with my trainer or take a high intensity cardio class. I spend an hour in spin class indoors and I ride my bike to get there. I’ve been working hard and doing all I can do and I’m getting minuscule results. I’m not losing the weight I want to lose but what I am is healthier and stronger than I’ve ever been, my weight is stabilizing, and most days I feel good about myself and where I am. Sometimes we need to take our eyes off the results and just focus on what we’re doing and let our satisfaction be found there. If we make those good choices one day at a time and do the hard work then the results will come in their own time. We can’t control when. Most of the time hard work doesn’t equal radical results. Hard work equals hard work and that in itself is a reward, especially for those of us who’ve spent years ignoring our health and our own needs.

Those are the 3 myths that Julie Hadden wrote about in her book but there are plenty of other myths around weight loss and good health that need to be dispelled. Can you describe another myth? I’ll send my copy of “Fat Chance” to the first person who posts another myth and explains how it’s impacted them.

As a recap, the lowest weight I reached following surgery was somewhere around 150 pounds and because I hit it once I’ve been feeling like that’s the weight I should be at to be “successful,” but even with a minimal caloric intake, drinking plenty of water, increasing my activity, yadda yadda yadda, the bathroom scales refuse to decrease in number. Unless I have a little extra to eat at a meal or add an extra snack and then those old bathrooms scales don’t hesitate to flash me an upward turn.

So the other day I was again engaged in obsessive thoughts about all this when I remembered that when I began the fast in January 2009 I never entertained the thought of getting to 150 and wearing size 8 jeans. No. The goal I set for myself at the time was to one day weight between 160-165 pounds, to reach a BMI of between 25-27, and I would have been elated to imagine myself in size 12 clothing. Well, guess what? Here are the facts as they stand today. My weight has, for the past few months, been consistently hovering between 158-162, my BMI without exercise has been just above 27, and I’m comfortably wearing size 10-12 jeans (though the one pair of size 8 jeans I bought at 150 still fit though breathing is optional). It took a number of years but finally I reached my goal and now that I’m there…it seems it’s not good enough.

Which leads to the question, do we ever get to a place in our lives where we’re genuinely content with how we look? Can we ever just relax into our bodies, look in the mirror, and say, “Looking good today Sweetheart” and actually mean it?  I know I want that and I’m working toward that end but not all that surprisingly sometimes the hardest work we do is between our two ears rather than between the two sides rails of a treadmill. Without going all Oprah, it just seems it would be a whole lot more beneficial and productive to be cheerleaders for ourselves rather than a panel of multiple sneering, cynical Simon Cowles.

And so the work continues….

There’s a theory that’s bantered around that after years of yo-yo dieting, and I have about 40 years of up and down and up, that we actually cause change to our metabolism which makes our bodies resistant to losing weight and it’s the only thing I’m able to come up with that explains what’s going on.

Here’s how the theory goes: Our body takes in calories as energy and metabolism is the process by which those calories are burned to keep our body fully functioning. The calories that aren’t burned as energy are either expended as waste or stored as fat; fat being the body’s warehouse supply for backup energy. In case you’re sent to Mars in a space ship and forget to pack lunch as a for instance. When we reduce our calories through dieting our body isn’t getting enough energy in and so it turns to the back up supply, burning stored fat which leads to weight loss. When we stop dieting and raise the calories we’re taking in again, the body stops tapping from the stored fat and returns to it’s usual process of processing all the energy from what’s incoming and then sending the extra to storage or waste.

It’s a good system. The problem is that when the amount of incoming calories radically fluctuates from scarcity to abundance repeatedly as it does through dieting and binging, dieting and binging, at some point the body makes the calculated decision to reset the metabolic rate to burn fewer calories permanently so it can continue to function consistently regardless of the unpredictability of the incoming energy supply. The effect that has is that to lose weight it takes eating fewer calories to lose the same amount of weight that could have been lost years earlier with more calories and the only way left to raise the reduced rate of energy (calorie) burn is to increase physical activity, forcing the body to convert more incoming calories and stored fat (reserve calories) into energy.

Thus concludes all I know about metabolism 101.

So this is my best guess as to what I’m currently experiencing in terms of my weight. Through years of yo-yo dieting my metabolism has been reset to function at a much lower rate that it once was and because my physical activity has been severely reduced as a result of my surgical recovery time and now that physical limitations are again in place to not aggravate my hernia until it’s repair in another month, my body is needing very few calories to keep going. That leaves me with three options.

1. Feel sorry for myself, throw in the towel and hurry down the street to In-N-Out for a double-double animal style burger. Not an option.
2. Stay with my bare-bones food plan and accept where my weight goes until I can return to my full activity level, allowing me to gradually lose any increase that’s occurred in my weight. While this seems the most sensible route to take, my weight is so unstable that I have genuine concerns as to where my weight would be by the first of March when I would be back to my full activity level.
3. Return to the full liquid fast until I can bring my weight back to the range where I feel it needs to be for optimal health and to achieve a 25 BMI I should weigh between 145-152 pounds. I decided a couple days ago to go with option 3 which reduces my caloric intake to well under 1000 calories and has already caused my body to release about four pounds.

Obviously I don’t want to be fasting. It’s not fun and I don’t like it. Call me crazy but I enjoy eating food. I like sitting down at the table with my adorable little portions of chicken, veggies and rice and spending a few minutes together. But the honest truth is, that after the surgeries I’ve had to remove the excess skin and the new shape that came with them, the anxiety level around shifts in my weight has been heightened off the charts. You know how it is after you’ve worked really hard to stick with a diet that you’ve had some success with and then to come off that diet and see the pounds slowly start to add up again? Multiple your feelings by five and you have some idea of how this feels.

So for now, until the weight settles back down (hopefully within a couple weeks) and I can get my crazy head together (I suspect that might take a little longer), I’m back on the fast. Aside from my whining in this post, I realize there are just some things I’m going to need to learn how to accept in terms of my body, how it responds, how it looks, and where it will ultimately end up leveling off poundage wise. I can only do what I can do and then leave the rest to God and my metabolism to work out together.

But more than I love gingerbread I love salad. I’ve probably spent the better part of four years accumulated time grazing over the grocery store salad bar in my life time, and being a certified, card-carrying overeater (a little is fine, more is always better) I can go overboard even when it comes to munching greens.

Case in point. For about six years my food plan included three weighed and measured meals a day with no snacks (similar to what I’m doing now but with two 100-calorie snacks added), and dinner consisted of 4 ounces of protein and 16 ounces of vegetables. A couple times a week D and I would head to the nearby grocery store salad bar and since there wasn’t a food scale nearby I’d create a salad masterpiece that I thought looked like it was around 16 ounces. Well, we came home one night from the store after doing this for months and just for fun I put my container of salad on the kitchen scales to see how close I was in my visual calculations. The answer? Not too close. Instead of weighing somewhere, anywhere, in the ballpark of 16 ounces I had managed to stuff 33 ounces of veggies into one of those little cardboard boxes. That’s right! I was eating over two pounds of salad in one sitting which when you think about it would be an ample bowl of salad to take to a church potluck.

Just another example of the power of my self-denial that basically got me up to 325 pounds in the first place. “Oh yeh, that looks like 16 ounces,” I’d tell myself as I used a construction crane lift or a support brace on my back to hoist it from the salad bar to my dining room table!

But I’m learning. I’m learning that 16 ounces of salad is a loosely packed, as opposed to jam-packed, salad in the salad take-home container. Oh, and I’ve learned that the last 1/4 of the salad bar located near the salad dressing is not for me. For me, those are just inedible decorations on the salad bar but not food for my salad box. You know what I’m talking about….the bowls of cheese, raisins, nuts, cheese, olives, croutons, cheese, crunchy carb thingies, and did I mention cheese?

Let’s do the math.

A tossed mixed vegetable salad has less than 100 calories in 16 ounces. That’s a good deal people when you think that a bowl of salad (lettuce, mushrooms, sprouts, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, radishes, pepperoncini, onions, cucumbers, jicama, celery…) has less calories than 2 Oreos and we’re not even talking Double-Stuff Oreos.

So take that bargain basement 100 calorie sweet deal and add just 1 ounce of crumbled blue cheese, 1 ounce of cheddar cheese, and a small spoonful each of raisins, dried cranberries, walnuts, pumpkin seeds and olives and the salad, without dressing, climbs to 781 calories. If that sound like an excessive amount of extras to you, it’s really not. In fact I’ve watched people at the salad bar who make the majority of their salad from the last quarter of the salad bar than from the first 3/4 ‘s of it.

And salad dressing? Depending on which dressing you choose on the salad bar, from their low-fat offering to the full deal Caesar or Blue Cheese, that healthy vegetable salad easily breaks through the 1000 calorie ceiling, unless you opted for the balsamic vinegar but you didn’t did you? I never did. And by the way, that’s based on using 4 tablespoons of salad dressing which in often the equivalent of one of the salad bar salad dressing ladles. Am I the only person on the planet who has been known to double-ladle? Oh. I’m the only one? Really?

So I love my salads even when with my self-imposed ban on the last 1/4 of the salad bar but the dilemma has continued to be what to do about the salad dressing especially when I’m focusing on reducing my added fats. I tried the spray salad dressings but I might as well have been hosing water on my salad for the little flavor they offered. I’ve used a scant amount of the name brand low-fat, reduced-calorie dressings and tried to stretch them for a little more salad coverage with apple cider vinegar but after a week or so grew tired of the acidity of the vinegar.

And then about a month ago it happened. A miracle at the end of aisle 6 between the pickles and mustard.

I saw these new salad dressings by Galeos on the shelf, checked out the back label and when I saw that the calories were between 14-22 calories per tablespoon I bought a bottle of each to try out and, word to your mother, they are AWESOME! There’s Caesar, Ginger and Wasabi, Dijonnaise, and Toasted Sesame Seed and Honey. The favors are so intense I never use more than 2-3 tablespoons at a time and if I choose to stretch them with apple or rice wine vinegar the acidity doesn’t overpower the taste. My favorite is probably the Toasted Sesame Seed dressing because it’s sweet, smoky and is wonderful on a salad that includes apples, but I’m still experimenting. Tonight’s chicken was marinated in the Dijonnaise with a little non-fat sour cream. Oh. Yum.

In the Spring and Summer I grill vegetables and in Autumn and Winter I roast vegetables. Whether roasted or grilled I fix them simple and keep them on the heat until some have turned to crispy bits.

While I’m not fond of raw or steamed cauliflower, it turns into something wonderful when roasted. The flavor mellows and takes on an almost nutty flavor with a smooth but firm texture that’s not crunchy like when it’s raw or mushy when it’s steamed. Last night I ate nearly a full head of cauliflower all by myself. It may have been a small head, approximately the size of a league-sanctioned softball (leave it to a lesbian for that comparison) but it was mine, all mine and it was deee-licious. This is how I prepared it.

Pre-heat the oven to 400 and put the rack one up from the center of the oven.

Either break or cut the cauliflower into very small florets. The other way to speed up the prep time is to use a mandoline if you have one and if you don’t have one, get one. Seriously, when you get comfortable using a mandoline, meaning you learn how to use it without slicing off your finger tips, you’ll find yourself using it more and more often. The one I have is the OXO V-Bladd Mandoline Slicer and priced at just under 40.00 it’s one of the cheaper mandolines on the market and is Cook’s Illustrated top choice.

Once you have a pile of cauliflower dump it on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Spray with a generous spritz of Pam Butter-Flavored Vegetable Spray. Toss the cauliflower on the baking sheet to mix it up and spray it again. Now spread the cauliflower out to the edges of the baking sheet so you have a flat layer instead of a pile. If the cauliflower is piled up too thick on the sheet the cauliflower underneath will essentially steam and only the top layer will get crispy and brown.

Before you put it in the oven sprinkle your preferred seasoning over the top. The top choices in our house are lemon omani (a black seed spice that tastes like lemon), smoked paprika, and garlic powder. Once your seasoning is on add a sprinkle of kosher or sea salt. Please, don’t use table salt. Not even at the table. Morton’s Table Salt is so yesterday and the crunch of sea salt adds a whole other texture to every bite.

Now just roast the cauliflower until it’s a rich dark brown. Depending on your oven it will take between 20-30 minutes. You might want to check it after the first 15 minutes and stir it up a little to allow the still white cauliflower on the bottom of the sheet to get some much needed color too.

That’s all you have to do to have a simple but beautiful vegetable side dish. A medium head of cauliflower (just under 1.5 pounds) has just 140 calories, provides a truckload of fiber and other stuff that promotes good health. And it’s yummy!

If calories aren’t a concern to you (and if that’s the case consider me rolling my eyes in your direction), then use a splash of olive oil instead of the vegetable spray and as soon as you take it out of the oven mix it with some roasted pinenuts or chopped walnuts and grate some fresh parmesan reggiano or pecorino over the top. If you just want to be decadent then go ahead and had some diced crispy bacon. You know you want to.

]]> http://www.anitasblog.com/roasted-cauliflower-candy/feed/ 2 http://www.anitasblog.com/bare-bones-plan-of-eating/ http://www.anitasblog.com/bare-bones-plan-of-eating/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:50:32 +0000 Anita http://www.anitasblog.com/?p=668 I intentionally refer to a plan of eating or a food plan rather than a diet for a couple reasons. 1) I don't like the word diet. I failed too many of them in my life time. And diets are something you do in the short term to lose weight and then it... Don't stop now...keep reading!

I had a blast! It’s been months since I’ve baked and with the exception of my annual gingerbread house bake-off when I bake and assemble 30-40 of them for the children at church to decorate at Christmas, it’s been years since I did something like this. I shipped four boxes of cookies to friends, took a tray of cookies to my plastic surgeon whose office is one block from our front door, sent a tray of cookies with D to work, and still had plenty to load off on some friends who came over for dinner that night.

But there was a problem. For all my resolve to not taste any of them, I did. I’m not a big lover of all things cookie myself. For me, it’s all about the dough. And the little bits of chocolate, toffee, coconut, and nuts that are tossed before baking. Those little bits of goodness that so easily manage to find their way from bowl or cutting board into my mouth are my undoing. If I just sat and ate cookies it would be easy to add up the damage but given it was in dabs and morsels, it’s a little more difficult to calculate. My best guess is I ate about the equivalent of 6-8 cookies over the 8 hour bake-a-thon.

Could it have been worse? Oh sure. For every time I popped a nibble in my mouth there was five times when I said no, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t want to go down this slippy road of consuming calories that a) are empty nutritionally and b) are eaten mindlessly rather than with intention. If I eat a cookie, I want it to be because I make the intention decision to have one and then I want to take the time to enjoy it and be satisfied with that bite of sweetness. I want to know that I can occasionally bake treats for friends and family and when I’m done, have no regrets that I had managed my own behavior better around the food.

I use to weight 325 pounds. I now weigh 150 pounds. My body shape has changed dramatically, my clothes sizes have dropped from size 30 to size 10, my self-esteem has risen and my level of health, according to all the doctors, rocks. Only one thing hasn’t changed and that is that I remain a compulsive over eater. My years in Overeater’s Anonymous taught me that and my own personal history with food since I was a child only serves to confirm it. My baking adventure on Monday reminded me yet again that unless I work consciously and deliberately at doing things differently I will default every time to my compulsive eating ways.

So what do I do with this information? Never bake cookies or cakes or pies again for friends and family and church? Some people would say that’s exactly what I should do but I hope it doesn’t have to come to that. I love baking for people. I fell in love with baking standing at my Grandma’s side. She’d dropped spoonfuls of peanut butter cookie dough on the cookie sheet and I’d follow behind making crisscross designs on the top of each with a dinner fork. She’d slide dozens of chocolate chip cookies warm from the oven onto the brown butcher paper that lined her counter top and when cool I’d gather them up and stack them in her beat-up silver metal cookie tins.  Never do I bake without thinking of my Grandma and every time it makes me smile because I know how proud she’d be of me and how she’d eat one of my cookies and act as though it was the best cookie she’d ever tasted.

But…if I can’t bake cookies without nibbling and tasting and “sampling” then giving up baking is something I’ll have to consider because I will NOT jeopardize all the work I’ve done to get to where I am. I love my health. I love feeling comfortable in my body. I love moving easier and more gracefully. When I add it all up, I love it collectively more than I do mixing cake batter or pressing a pie crust into a pan or making crisscross markings on the top of a peanut butter cookie. If I have to give up the one for the other than the baking goes. I just hope that doesn’t have to happen.

That leads me to this…how could I have done Monday differently? What plans could I have put in place that would have supported my resolve to not nibble away on empty, wasted calories? What can I do different next time? Here are some ideas I’ve come up with. Feel free to add some of your own because clearly, I can use all the help I can get.

• Limit the hours I bake at one time so that I’m less likely to get “worn down” by being around so much food for so long.
• Prepare any meals I might need on baking day ahead of time and then STOP baking, sit down at the table and eat.
• Keep a glass of cold water on the counter.
• Fill a glass with ice water and some nibble veggies like sticks of carrot, celery, or jicama.
• Chew sugarless gum. I thought of this toward the end of the day and it really did help to keep me from putting anything else in my mouth. Chewing cinnamon gum and cookie dough at the same time isn’t all that appealing.
• Remember the quality of life I’m enjoying that I never want to risk losing for a few sugary-fatty bites.
• And maybe it would help to have these two photos taped side by side on my kitchen cabinet within view…

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